As indicated at the conclusion of Part One, “About Phil Scopes,” Phil’s education, employment, and his desire to create an accessible service culminated in Phil developing Net-By-Phone in June, 1999. What makes Net-By-Phone both accessible and unique is that it requires neither a computer nor a special phone to read E-mail and browse the Internet. By using any landline, cordless or cellular phone, one can access his/her account simply by dialing a number much as an individual might do to get into telephone banking or voicemail. Once in the system, synthetic speech will read E-mail to which you can respond simply by using your voice. The ability to use one’s voice to send and respond to E-mails is a big plus for persons whose hand coordination difficulties might make it virtually impossible to keyboard on a computer or even use a phone key pad much as one might do to text.

Just as using any telephone and one’s voice brings a new level of ease and accessibility to sending E-mail, so, too, does this simple combination lend ease and quickness to browsing any website. The computerized speech with which any website is spoken reads text, HTML, attachments, MP3s, and Wav files. To say more about Wav files, recipients of Net-By-Phone voice-generated E-mails must be able to open Wav files. With so many access technologies for persons who are blind or vision-impaired being very expensive, one might understandably question the affordability of this service. As someone who utilized Net-By-Phone for several years, I can assure you that there are pricing plans to meet any budget (see www.net-by-phone.com for pricing plans using either a Chicago number or a toll-free number).

A final aspect of Net-By-Phone that maintains flexibility and innovation is the option to access e-mail and the Internet entirely with your voice or to use the phone keypad much as one might do when texting.

The focus of the third and final part of this series will be the unique and extensive voicemail system Phil Scopes has also developed and implemented.